


Bid My Heart Be Still

by RhiannonSilverflame (throughtosunrise)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 17:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throughtosunrise/pseuds/RhiannonSilverflame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Nothing in this garden opposed the sacred effort of things towards life; venerable growth was at home there."</i>
</p>
<p>The plants in the garden of the house on the Rue Plumet might have been allowed to grow freely, but there was one thing there that Cosette took care to cultivate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bid My Heart Be Still

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smokefall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokefall/gifts).



"So! This is how it looks in the sunlight!"

Cosette had been doing her best to wait as patiently as she could, but the way she sprang up from her seat on the stone bench when she heard Éponine's voice put the lie to her efforts. She reached out to take Éponine by the hand and pull her further into the garden, away from the gate.

"How you talk, as if you hadn't been by dozens of times during the day before! Need I remind you that it was just past midday, the first time you and I spoke through that very gate?"

Éponine cast a thoughtful look at her, and Cosette felt herself flushing under the curious intensity of that gaze – or was it just that the scent of grass crushed underfoot as they ambled slowly through the garden was going to her head? 

"Yes," Éponine said, "of course I remember. It was a fine, sunny day, and I thought, well, how lovely and warm it is! I only meant to enjoy it a little bit, instead of hurrying by as if trying to get in out of the cold, and then I heard you calling to me – isn't your father going to be angry, if he finds me here?"

Cosette caught Éponine's hand up in her own and gave it an impulsive squeeze for reassurance; she was secretly glad to feel Éponine's fingers curl a little more tightly around her own, rather than letting go. "He's away at National Guard service right now – and Toussaint's gone to market," she added before she could stop herself.

"Ah! So you're all alone, then, are you?" A sly smile crossed Éponine's face. "It's a good thing that one can't look into the garden from the street, in that case. It wouldn't do for the lady of the house to be seen in such company."

"Hush," chided Cosette, squeezing her hand again. "You didn't object quite so much that first afternoon."

True, at the time Éponine had only come to the gate because she thought that she was being asked to do some small errand in exchange for a coin or two, but Cosette sensed something else beneath the half-teasing words.

"You didn't invite me in that afternoon."

"Only because I couldn't be sure you would accept," Cosette said; somewhat abashedly, she went on, "I rather thought you might have run instead."

Éponine said nothing in response, and only turned to look at her instead with a singular expression in her sunken eyes that stirred uneasy memories of the one and only other time she had ever looked at Cosette that way. Cosette was suddenly, acutely aware of their hands, still clasped; she turned her hand, just enough to seek out Éponine's fingers with her own and intertwine them. 

"No," she declared in a firm tone. "You didn't run then, and you aren't to do it now. I'd be quite vexed indeed if you were to go away, as I enjoy your company a great deal, so I won't have any of it."

It was the first time Cosette had ever stated any such thing out loud and, from the look of amazement that spread across Éponine's face and at least temporarily chased away the perpetual despair in her eyes, the first time in a very long time anyone must have said anything of the sort to her. The effect was dramatic, not at all unlike a ray of sunlight bursting through a bank of clouds.

"Truly, now!" Éponine finally exclaimed with an incredulous laugh. "After what I very nearly did, and all you know about me! Even then?"

Cosette caught up Éponine's free hand with her own and very deliberately held her gaze. "Especially then. Do you really think I would keep asking you to come back otherwise? Because it's silly of you, if so. You never had to say who you were, or you could have told your father instead of –" she swallowed hard against the memory of scrambling about in the dark for a washbasin and bandages as silently as possible, so as to not wake Toussaint or Papa and have to explain the presence of an unfamiliar and ill-dressed girl in the garden. "You haven't."

Éponine seemed to relax a bit at that, although the mention of her father brought some of the gloom back to her features. "And I won't, you can be certain of that," she said fiercely, and there was something almost possessive about the way she squeezed Cosette's hands as if to emphasize the words.

Cosette got a bit of a thrill out of it, to tell the truth; it took her a moment or two to remember to speak again.

"I believe you."

A faint, bitter smile tugged at the corners of Éponine's mouth. "There's people who would say that's foolish of you."

"And I don't care at all if they do," maintained Cosette, stubbornly.

Éponine stared at her, worrying her lower lip with her teeth, and finally pulled back to spin away from Cosette with a laugh that rang too loudly and with too much abandon to be convincing. "Well, never mind, then! Let's see how this garden of yours looks in the daylight, why don't we?"

It was a curious thing, sharing her garden with someone else, and sometimes Cosette wondered at herself for choosing to share it with Éponine, a tangible link to the unhappy haze that was all she remembered of her earliest years – but if she was taking a risk in doing so, it was only fair.

***

_“It was us that you lived with, ages and ages ago. D'you remember? I'm not surprised if you don't, it was ever so long and we were so small.”_

_"Why?" Cosette's mouth was dry, and she gripped the bars of the gate as she turned Éponine's words over in her mind. Memories of her life with the Thénardiers were little more than a haze of fear and despair, but now they were swirling, coalescing into faceless shapes in the mist. "Why are you telling me this now?"_

_"Because I don't want to fool you any longer," Éponine murmured in the darkness from the other side of the gate, her broken whisper barely audible. "It's stupid of me, perhaps, but there it is. It was nice, having someone speak kindly, but you oughtn't be around the likes of me. I only thought – well, I thought you might be upset if I suddenly never came 'round any more, and I couldn't bear the thought. So I said to myself, well then, I'll just tell her, as it's only fair for her to know why I've gone and disappeared, and besides I'd like to see her one last time. And so –"_

_Cosette took a breath, steeled herself, and reached through the bars of the gate to catch hold of Éponine's too-thin wrist and dispel the memories of their childhood._

_"Well, you'd better come in, then, if you'd rather I not be upset."_

***

It delighted and fascinated Cosette to watch Éponine explore the garden with the occasional pause to exclaim over a cluster of flowers or look up to see some bird she'd startled out of the underbrush as it flew away; she couldn't help wondering if it had been like this for Papa when he first set her loose in the garden and told her to play.

"Isn't this so much nicer than the Luxembourg!" exclaimed a slightly breathless Éponine as she came to sit down on the stone bench beside Cosette. "The Luxembourg's pretty enough, of course, but it's all so ordered and proper and sometimes I feel as though all I have to do is breathe when I oughtn't and everything will go wrong. You know what I mean, of course."

Cosette was smiling; she always was, after listening to one of Éponine's rambling speeches, and for her part Éponine grew increasingly animated and cheerful the longer she went on. Éponine spoke as though she had years' worth of pent-up conversations to share; Cosette listened with the rapt attention of a girl who had been lonely for far too long; these conversations always seemed to dispel a little of the lingering gloom in both their lives.

Yes, perhaps it was strange to have chosen to share her garden with Éponine, but all Cosette had to do was look at the way their time together nearly transfigured Éponine with happiness to know she'd made the right choice.

"I do know what you mean," she said, "and I quite agree. It's pretty enough, but I don't love it as I do this place."

"Love this overgrown, wild tangle more than one of the finest parks in Paris! You are quite a strange girl, Mademoiselle Fauchelevent," teased Éponine.

Cosette made a soft noise of feigned indignation and leaned forward to cover Éponine's hand with her own. "And why shouldn't I love it for what it is, rather than what it might have been once? Who's to say I'm not allowed?" 

"Very well, then. Just suppose you knew what it might have been once, as well as what it is. Would you love it more or less for knowing?" Éponine challenged.

Her gaze was intent, hopeful, and nervous all at once, and a faint tingle of pleasure ran up Cosette's spine when she met Éponine's eyes.

"More," she answered. Her face was flushed and her breath came a bit shallower, but her voice rang with conviction. "What it might have been doesn't matter to me, not one little bit."

Éponine looked like she was about to say something, but instead she jumped up from the bench and hurried over to one of the garden's statues, its features slowly eroding under the moss that threatened to engulf it completely. 

"D'you suppose he was handsome underneath all of that once? Poor old fellow," she said in a distinct tone of sympathy. 

Cosette came up behind her and laid both hands gently on her shoulders.

"Oh, I don't know," she murmured, close to Éponine's ear. "I think he looks handsome enough just like that. Perhaps not in the way the sculptor intended, but I rather like it."

Éponine had gone still under her hands, but she seemed to relax just a tiny bit at Cosette's words. "There are finer sculptures in the Luxembourg, you know," she said as she turned to face Cosette, and it was a question and a challenge all at once.

"And the Luxembourg can have them." Cosette bent her head and brushed her lips against Éponine's, lightly. "I'm quite content with mine."

**Author's Note:**

> When I came up with the idea for this, it was a much more elaborately developed metaphor in my head. Sadly, RL was not terribly cooperative, and I'm very sorry about that.
> 
> Title taken from "The Girl I Mean to Be," from _The Secret Garden_. I think I'm funny.


End file.
